One fascinating thing that I quote in Raised With Christ is J. I. Packer’s assertion that Puritans were very unlike Christians today in that they liked to talk about their experiences of God. Today I want to share with you the record of a remarkable experience of God had by Pascal. The following quote is a translation of a document found sewn into his clothing after his death. The original French can be found at the link below.

The quote that follows is credited by John Piper with having totally changed his life decades ago, and he speaks about this in a sermon on the DGM site.

Pascal was determined to never forget this encounter with God and the effect that it had on him. Biographers call this “The Memorial” and describe the whole event as a “second conversion,” which came after months of depression and a near death experience (his carriage almost fell over a bridge). He never spoke about the experience to others. But it changed the whole direction of his life.

You will note that the quote mentions nothing about tongues, so do not dismiss it if you are a cessationist: many experienced God without any of the spiritual gifts. Also, do not assume you have experienced all that God has for you, even if you are a tongues-speaking charismatic.

Have you met God like this? If not, I do strongly believe it is entirely right for us to seek to know him like this, indeed it is commanded by the Bible for us to do so. When I read these kind of accounts, to be honest, there is a resonance in some of my memories of meeting with God, BUT they leave me with a hunger for more. Please pray for me as I am praying right now for you, my blog readers, that God will meet with us like this:

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.

Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.

From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob

not of the philosophers and of the learned.

Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

GOD of Jesus Christ.

My God and your God.

Your GOD will be my God.

Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.

He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.

Grandeur of the human soul.

Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

I have departed from him:

They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.

My God, will you leave me?

Let me not be separated from him forever.

This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.

Let me never be separated from him.

He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:

Renunciation, total and sweet.

Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.

Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.

May I not forget your words. Amen.

via Pascal’s Memorial@Everything2.com.

UPDATE- I have found the original source and as it is only now availble on the wayback machine include a copy here.
———

The Doctor thinks we are crazy if we reject the notion of God intervenng directly in human history today. This quote makes me want to pray more for him to stretch out his hand and act:

‘What is being taught in Christendom today is this, that since we have got the New Testament canon, since we have got the Word now, we do not need these direct interventions, we do not need God to speak to us directly, as He spoke to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob and these patriarchs. We have got the Word now! Is this superior to the direct speech of God? I think we are mad! There is no other word for this. We are mad.

We are meant to be in a superior position to every Old Testament saint because of what has happened in our blessed Lord and Saviour! But this teaching would have us believe that we do not need this direct contact with God now, and that all that has come to an end since the formation of the New Testament canon…….remember that the great point of the whole teaching of the Bible, of all you can deduce from it, is to tell you that God is a God who acts. And our only hope this afternoon is that this is still true. He has not finished acting. He is going on….There is only one hope. That is that He is still the living and the acting God. Christ is at His right hand, and He is seated and waiting until His enemies should be made His footstool…….

I have been defending the faith – and people have praised me for doing it. Rubbish! What a miserable failure it has all been! From now on I am determined to do one thing only, and that is to give God no rest nor peace, until He does prove Himself and show Himself. I have expended so much energy in reasoning with the people about this faith. We have got to do that, it is part of preaching. But if we stop at that it will avail us nothing. But what I now am concerned about and I am concentrating on is this – asking God to show Himself, to do something,to give this touch, this manifestation of power. Nothing else will even make people listen to us. ….Nothing is going to call the attention of the masses of the people to the truth of this faith save a great phenomenon, such as the phenomenon of the day of Pentecost, the phenomenon of any one of the great revivals, the phenomenon of a single changed life. This is something that always arrests attention, maybe curiosity – what does it matter? The people come and listen……

We must not be content until we have had some manifestation of the activity of God. We must concentrate on this. This is my plea, that we concentrate on this, because it is the great message of the Bible……. Let us put it like this: Do we really believe that God can still act? That is the question; that is the ultimate challenge. Or have we, for theological or some other reasons, excluded the very possibility? Here is the crucial matter. Do we individually and personally really believe that God still acts, can act and will act – in individuals, in groups of individuals, in churches, localities, perhaps even in countries? Do we believe that He is as capable of doing that today as He was in ancient times – the Old Testament, the New Testament times, the book of Acts, Protestant Reformation, Puritans, Methodist Awakening, 1859, 1904-5? Do we really believe that He can still do it? You see, it is ultimately what you believe about God. If He is the great Jehovah – I am that I am, I am that I shall be, unchanged, unchanging, unchangeable, the everlasting and eternal God – well, He can still do it.

=====COPY OF ORIGINAL SOURCE AVAILABLE ONLINE HERE=============

The Evangelical Magazine of Wales April 1981

Magazine Index

THE LIVING GOD

D. MARTYN LLOYD-JONES

Each year since its inception in 1955 the Doctor attended the annual Ministers’ Conference unless prevented from so doing by ill-health or absence from the country. He would chair the open discussions and bring the Conference to a memorable conclusion with a closing address. Here is one such address, delivered in June 1971, but still relevant.

I THANK God for this privilege of being allowed to do this year by year. I always feel it is a great responsibility, and yet it is, as I say, a very great pleasure and I am deeply grateful.

The remark that I want to try to give to you is in many ways a continuation of what we were discussing together on Monday night. The emphasis was that our troubles are mainly due to the fact that there is a lack of life amongst us. Ultimately all our problems can more or less be traced back to that – a lack of life. Now I want to go on from there to ask the question, Why is there this lack of life? Or at any rate, what is the main cause? If I were asked to name one cause, what is it? And I for myself would not hesitate to answer that it is due to a lack of a realization that God is a living God. We are not only in trouble about life in ourselves; we seem at times to forget that there is life in God.

It is this neglect of the living God – the God who acts. That is why I asked our friend Mr. Swann to read that portion of Scripture to us (Acts 13:24-42), because it is one of the many summaries that you have in the Bible that brings out this great point. Have you noticed how that so frequently in the Old Testament and in the New, when there is a crisis, when there is trouble, what the man of God does is to give a review of history. The psalmist does it constantly. You have several instances of it here in this book: Stephen did it in his great defence; Paul does it here in Antioch in Pisidia. A review, a grand review! Why? Just because it brings out the main element.

I feel that, as in the secular world, our greatest danger in the spiritual world is to miss the wood because of the trees. This is a perpetual thing. We are obsessed by details, over-concerned about particulars, and our greatest danger of all is to miss this whole, this grand whole, because of our inordinate preoccupation with these particular trees. I feel that at a time like this, and especially in these conditions, this is perhaps our greatest need. Our discussion which has just finished is, I think, an instance of it. It is inevitable. We cannot help this because we are in the flesh still. But I believe we have to be very careful about it, especially because it ultimately leads to the position in which (though it sounds almost incredible) our greatest sin of all is to fail to realize that God is an acting God – He does act.

Our whole position depends upon that: God’s action in the past, God’s action in the present, God’s action in the future. Now I believe it is important that we should analyse for a moment the ways in which we have tended to forget that God is a God who acts. One, of course, is the danger always of religion. Religion is generally the greatest enemy of the Christian faith. To be a religious person is one of the greatest hindrances to becoming a Christian, because it gives certain satisfactions. And we know today that, speaking of the churches in general in this land, there are congregations with an alarming percentage of people who are religious but who are not Christians. Religion is dangerous, you see, for this reason, that it is always something that puts emphasis upon our activities, our practices – we practise religion. And thereby we tend to think that it is entirely a matter of our activities, our conduct and behaviour, with the result that God is nearly always forgotten – taken for granted, of course, but therefore forgotten.

Then another cause of this – which comes a little bit nearer to us, speaking as evangelical brethren – is that we become so immersed in our activities that we do not stop to think what we are doing, or why we are doing it. Professionalism is the greatest curse of the minister. And although we are born-again men, we are ever in danger of becoming professionals. We are involved in preparation of sermons and preaching them. We are announced to do it; it is a part of the machine. And we have pastoral duties, funerals to take and marriages. The pastor is a very busy man – and this has to go on and on and on. As I think I was saying on Monday night in that story about Wilberforce, one of the easiest things of all is for a man to forget his own soul and to forget God. Of course, he still gets on his knees mechanically and says his prayers, but sometimes he stops at that. Even praying is part of a routine, part of the thing to do, and there is no realization of the living God, this God who acts. So then, that is one of the causes why we are constantly falling into this particular error.

Another one, of course, and a very prolific one, is false evangelism. We are all familiar with this; we have all seen it, perhaps taken part in it. When I talk about false evangelism, I mean that type of evangelism which conceives of itself primarily as a matter of organizing a campaign. The church is losing numbers. What can we do? We can hold a campaign. You decide who to have as your missioner, and so on. The whole outlook is one of activity – what can we do? We must have a campaign. Or if you are eager young people, it is a part of the outlook and the routine, and certain students go on a campaign and decide which town to attack and to evangelize, and so on. That is the mentality. This is the way in which the thinking takes place.

NOW … AND THEN

Now, you know, we have dealt with this many times in this conference. But there has been a very great departure here from what used to be the custom and the habit of our fathers. I do not mean our immediate fathers; I mean our great-great-great-grandfathers. You have to go back a long time. You see, when things were not going well in the churches, they reacted in a very different way. What they did was to say: ‘What’s the matter? Why has God left us? Have we offended Him? There must be some cause for this.’ So the minister and deacons would talk together and they would decide to call a day of prayer and humiliation. Humiliation was the word used – prayer and humiliation, sometimes accompanied by fasting. And they would tell God. They felt that they had wounded Him and hurt Him, that He was obviously turning His back on them like a wayfaring man. They would acknowledge and confess their sins and they would plead with Him to come back. That was their way. But, you see, that has gone, and it has been missing from the background of most who are troubled here today. Many of us, most of us by now probably, have seen the error of all this. But that has been our background, and these things tend to go on influencing us even though we have seen they are wrong.

Well then, what makes it so terrible is this, that when these arrangements are made and the organizations are set up and they have their committees to deal with this and that, generally, towards the end of the meeting, somebody will say: ‘Ah well, of course, we must have some prayer backing.’ Prayer backing! God as an afterthought! So you set up a subcommittee for prayer. And it is generally an afterthought, the last thing. You see, the whole approach is in terms of what man can do and human activity. God is only remembered almost casually at the end, and in a perfunctory manner. Then in the actual carrying out of the evangelism, the same thing comes in. The controlling idea has been this. Here is a statement made of the gospel. The people are asked to believe this and to receive it. And if they do so, they are told they are Christians. They take a decision, or they sign a form or a book or do something else. The whole emphasis again is, you see, upon man, upon man’s response. A number of doctrines are put before him, and he is asked to receive them and to accept them and to believe them, and he is assured that if he does so he is a Christian. Now we know that that is Roman Catholic teaching. Their view is that what a man does is to accept the body of doctrine and of dogma that is put before him.

It seems to me that evangelicals in this country, speaking very generally, have been doing precisely the same thing. It is put not so much in terms of ‘coming into contact with the living God’, as of accepting a number of propositions. If you accept those, you are a Christian. ‘Do you believe these things? If you do, all is well.’ Now again, you see, the departure from the old evangelicalism is quite alarming. There you read, in biographies and church histories and so on, of men coming under conviction of sin, and perhaps it would last a long time. John Bunyan was eighteen months in tremendous agony of soul, searching for God. Now I have often heard evangelical people saying today that this was all wrong, that these people were ignorant. Why didn’t they show the man salvation? Why eighteen months of repentance? He could be put right quite simply. Some evangelical organizations could put this man right in a matter of a few seconds. There is a verse – and a verse – one, two, three, four, five – got it all! But you see, the point then was that men conceived of salvation as coming to a knowledge of the living God, not accepting a number of propositions. So while the emphasis is on accepting a number of propositions or a statement, God is really forgotten. I know they all believe in God, they may make statements about God. But what is never brought out is that the essence of this matter is a meeting with God – doing business with God.

The old preachers, you see, brought this out very well. I remember having a most excellent illustration of this in my first year in the ministry in 1927. I had the great privilege of preaching on that occasion with a great old preacher in South Wales, called W. E. Prytherch. We were preaching together at Pyle in Glamorgan, and I had to preach first. The old man went up after me. He would not preach, but he said that I had stated the gospel and that he had a function to perform. And he said that he was just a little agent representing a great master, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now what he told the people was this – he didn’t simply ask the people to believe what I had been saying-he put it like this: ‘This is what I am here for-to tell you that Jesus Christ is in the office now. Come and see Him – the Person – go to your office.’ With a break in his voice – and what an extraordinary voice it was – he said, ‘Go to your office.’ Well, it was the personal encounter. That is the thing that I am concerned to emphasize. We, in our false views of evangelism, tend to put our stress upon the acceptance of a number of statements, and we are then incidentally forgetting God, and forgetting that the main thing is the activity of God.

APOLOGETICS?

But then, coming still nearer to our subject, I have a terrible feeling – and it is terrible, because I am one of the chiefest of the sinners – that nothing has so caused us to forget God and to forget the living, acting God, as our concern about apologetics. We have regarded ourselves as the defenders, the guardians, the custodians of the faith. We are that of course, but I am afraid that we have often stopped at that, and we have given the whole of our time and energy to defending the faith, defending the propositions- and forgetting God. Now you see, it is all a question of balance. We have got to indulge in apologetics. But what worries me, as I look back across my life, is that I have probably given too much time and attention to apologetics. Thirty years ago it was still more necessary than now. It is always necessary, but then we were still fighting the old liberalism up to a point. And quite unconsciously one could be found a sort of an apologete and no more. God was really forgotten, and one got engaged in endless discussions and debates. You were defending the truth at this point and that point, and safeguarding the whole position, steadying the ark and putting your hands on it to steady it – forgetting God! I am quite sure of it, and I plead guilty to it myself. One often indulged in these apologetics in a more or less carnal manner, and one enjoyed scoring points off the other side. But the terrible thing was that God tended to be forgotten. So let us be very careful about this matter of apologetics. Let us keep it in its place. I am almost coming to the conclusion that the only place that apologetics should have is briefly in an introduction to a sermon. If you spend the whole of your time on apologetics, you are really not preaching the gospel. Start with it if you like and just do a little demolition work; but do not pat yourself on the back and go home and have a wonderful meal because you have just pulled down a rotten building! The question is: Have you put anything up? The danger of being negative! And the danger of feeling ‘It’s our gospel, my church I am protecting, my interests’ – and forgetting God!

Or then, still more recently, something else has been happening, which has aggravated this whole tendency to forget God. And this is the new and increasing preoccupation with what is called in general ‘the application of the gospel’. Now we are creatures, you see, of reaction. The charge that has been brought for many years against those of us who are evangelical is that we have taken no interest in social and political conditions. This has been the constant attack against us. All our interest was in our little personal souls and their salvation – forgetting the world. We have not had a social emphasis. This attack, of course, was made for years and years upon us. I remember very well in about 1947 reading a book by Dr. Carl Henry, soon afterwards the editor of Christianity Today. He wrote a book with the title of The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, and I read this with great interest. He tells us that the lost note in Fundamentalism was this lack of social interest. I remember feeling at the time what a serious misjudgment this was, what an utterly false diagnosis. He was dealing with American Fundamentalism; and he said the missing note in American Fundamentalism was this lack of a social interest. I remember writing to him at the time and discussing it with him afterwards and venturing to suggest to him that he had missed the point, and that the real trouble – the missing note in American Fundamentalism as I have met it and known it – was a lack of spirituality, a carnality, professional evangelism, professional apologetics. That was the thing that appalled me when I first met American Fundamentalism – the sheer carnality of the outlook. They were more like business men than Christian men.

Well now, you see, the more intellectual men began to react to this criticism, and they said: ‘We must bring in this note!’ And they have been doing so ever since. So that now it is almost the controlling idea – Christian philosophy! You know, it has been going for a long time in Holland. It was started there by Professors Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven. And this is a teaching which talks about Christian politics, Christian medicine, even Christian mathematics, Christian everything! It is this idea of law and of spheres, and so on. Well now, this has come down in many, many different ways, sometimes almost purely philosophically. I remember attending a conference in the South of France in 1953. And, to be honest and to be helpful, I have got to say this: I had to keep on reminding myself that I was in a Christian conference! I had to remind myself of it, because all the papers were entirely philosophical, and the arguments and disputations were almost entirely on that level. There was virtually no prayer at all. It was all a question of papers and of discussions, but it was a Calvinistic conference.

‘CHRISTIANITY AND………’

This is the thing that has now come in like a flood into evangelicalism, particularly in England. Everybody is talking about the Christian attitude towards this and that. I happened the other day casually to pick up the syllabus of a well-known Christian organization, and I noticed that the next two meetings are to be on these things. The first is to be on ‘The Christian attitude towards strikes’, and the other on ‘The Christian attitude towards art’. You see, this is the thing! We have been missing this. And some of them press it so far as to say that if you want to evangelize the modern world, you have got to know something about politics, you have got to know something about art, you have got to know something about literature, you have got to know something about novels, the modern drama, the modern films – and so on. The argument is that you cannot evangelize the modern man if you cannot speak to him in his own idiom, if you do not know how he thinks. So you have got to familiarize yourself with these things. I do not know that I have told you here of an experience I had about fifteen months ago. I was preaching in a certain place, and a young man and his wife, who were going to be missionaries, were very kindly driving me there and back. They belonged to the church where I was preaching. As we were going home that night, the wife, sitting at the back, suddenly burst upon me, ‘Could I ask you a question?’ I said, ‘Yes, what is it?’ ‘Now’, she said, ‘what’s your view about reading modern novels?’ I was somewhat taken aback, because I knew that she was in a well-known missionary training college. I said, ‘Why do you ask that question?’ She replied: ‘I am in great trouble about it in my college. I am actually being persecuted.’ ‘What’s this?’ I asked. ‘Well’, she said, ‘one of our lecturers told us that if we want to evangelize the modern man, we really must know what he reads, what he is talking about, the way in which he thinks.’ So now, one of the first things she has to do is to read modern novels. The lecturer had commanded certain novels. ‘I read one of them’, said this candidate. ‘You know, it did me such harm, and it made me so unhappy and so miserable that I decided I should not read another one. I could see no purpose in it and it did me great harm. I refuse to read any more.’ She added ‘I am now being attacked by my fellow-students and by the lecturers. They say I am not doing my duty, and I cannot be an effective missionary’ – because she was not reading these modern novels! I said: ‘Didn’t they tell you that you ought to spend three to six months in a public house every night, so that you could evangelize drunkards? Did they tell you that?’ No, they had not told her that! I said: ‘They should have – to be logical – they should have!’ – But this is the attitude. What does it mean? It means that God is forgotten. You see, we do it all.

Now, the extraordinary thing about this is that this teaching has come from the Free University of Amsterdam, the great Calvinistic College, founded by Abraham Kuyper in 1880, the great bulwark of the Reformed Faith. That is where it has come from. This is what is so interesting. Calvinism, which has always exalted the sovereignty and the glory of God, has now become thoroughly Arminian in this matter! God is more or less forgotten. And that outlook I met in America two years ago, where even in well-known seminaries they on the whole did not believe in preaching any more. What you do is this: you go to people’s houses and you start talking politics to them, and you show the defects in their politics and try to introduce them to Christian politics. Or, if they are interested in art, you see paintings on the wall and you start talking about modern art; you expose the wrongfulness of modern art and its background, and then you tell them about Christian art – and so on. That is the way in which you evangelize. The declaration, such as Paul made in Athens – ‘whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you!’ – that is out. You do not declare Him with a dialogue! You hold a discussion. So you see, in this way God, I maintain, is being forgotten. The whole emphasis is upon our trying, our becoming well-versed in these various disciplines and interests and aspects of culture today. This is the way. Brethren, I maintain that this is a denial of God – the living, acting God and His sovereignty in all these matters!

THEOLOGICAL SCHOLASTICS

I must go one further step. I believe the same thing is happening in the realm of what I call a ‘theological scholasticism’ which is beginning to manifest itself amongst us – a ‘theological scholasticism’ in which we talk about the doctrines of grace instead of talking about God, the doctrines of salvation instead of Christ, the living Saviour. I believe that this is a new form of Deism. I could convict so many today of a new Deism. You know what that means. It took this form at the beginning of the eighteenth century: God was regarded as the great Creator, described as a great watch-maker. He made the watch, He wound it up, and then He put it down and He has no more to do with it. That was their way, you see, of denying miracles. Miracles are nonsense, they said. God does not interfere. He has made the watch, He has put it down, and on it goes; He does not interfere with it. Deism! Well, I suspect a new kind of Deism is with us. I was referring to it partly yesterday in talking about miraculous healing and miracles and things of that kind. On some sort of theological and biblical grounds, as they would claim, they say that miracles cannot happen today, because all this ended with the Apostles. As if to say, ‘Oh yes, God acted then; but He hasn’t acted like that since.’ He is shut out, on a priori grounds, on what they call biblical and theoretical grounds. They say, ‘God does not act like that now.’ They are shutting Him out. Is not that Deism? Who has given them the right to say this? The Scriptures do not say it, but they are saying it.

The fact is, of course, that there are many such people, who not only will not admit the possibility of miracles today, or at any time since the apostolic era, but equally reject the possibility of demon-possession today. They are dismissing it all as psychological. They will not grant that it is possible for a person to be demon-possessed today. They admit, of course, that it happened in New Testament times; but, they say, not now. I am not imagining all this. I have been involved in discussions about it, and I know that this is their standpoint. They will not accept the possibility of demon-possession today. It is all explained in terms of psychology. This is as if to say, you see, that because, on their understanding of it, God had decided at the end of the apostolic era that He would not interfere any more in a miraculous manner, the devil also very kindly and very politely said, ‘Well, I will not act either.’ That is what it comes to. You see, the thing is monstrous and ridiculous. In other words, these men have worked themselves into a theoretical and academical theological position in which God is not allowed to act, and the demons are not allowed to act; there is no spiritual activity. What is Christianity? Well, Christianity is an acceptance of a body of doctrine, and a discussion of this and a defence of this, and an attempt to understand it more and more.

Now I say that this shuts out God. The fact that men talk a lot about God does not mean that they really believe in the living God. They are talking about God; they are making statements about God; they are experts on the attributes of God; but they seem to shut out the living God, God Himself, the acting God. By their theories, He is not allowed to act. This is Deism; it is a kind of theological scholasticism. And this is the terrifying thing, that you can be talking about God and His attributes and so on, and yet have no contact with and no personal knowledge of this living God. I am not exaggerating, brethren, I am speaking solemn truths and facts. You can find some of the highest and most orthodox seminaries and collections of Christian men, reformed, Calvinistic, orthodox up to the latest dot, and the guardians of this faith, and some of them never have a prayer meeting and never talk about prayer. As I say, in their actual teaching they exclude the activity of the spiritual realm directly and immediately today, whether from the side of the Holy Spirit, or from the side of the evil spirits.

REVIVAL – DANGEROUS?

In the same way, of course, they are not interested in the whole notion of revival. They never talk about it; in fact, they dislike it. Revivals are regarded as enthusiasm, as something excessive, dangerous, ecstatic. They say this is not what is needed. We have received everything, we are born again, we have the Scriptures. What we need to do is just to go on to understand the Scriptures more deeply. They not only do not expect the Spirit to come upon them, but they do not like teaching which suggests that He can come, and that we should pray for Him to come. All this is disliked. Now I am not imagining this. I could prove this to you. Those of you who have the three volumes of Charles Hodge on Theology, observe the amount of space which he gives to the Holy Spirit in those three volumes; observe the amount of space he gives to revival. You can do the same with the works of Warfield. I say this with profound regret, because of my debt to these men. But I think that was the great weakness in their whole position, as it was still more in the case of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck of Holland. The result is that today institutions that were founded as bastions of orthodoxy have become hotbeds of modernism and liberalism. And I would attribute it entirely to this, that it had become theoretical, intellectual; it has become an intellectualism, God is shut out, even though they are always talking about God. This is the tragedy of the situation, and it reminds us of the subtlety of the devil.

This further shows itself in this way, in an antipietistic attitude. Pietism has become a term of abuse by now. When you talk about the subjective element and the experimental, it is dismissed as Pietism. It has been a word of taboo for years on the Continent, and in Holland in particular, where they call it either Pietism or Methodism. They dislike it; they show bitterness with respect to it. It is astounding that many who claim to be the most biblical of all men should react even with temper and with an element of violence against what they call Pietism. They dislike the eighteenth century, and so on.

GOD WHO ACTS

Well now, these are the ways, I think, in which unconsciously so many of us have been forgetting God, the living God. Why is this so wrong? There is only one answer: because it contradicts the main message of the Bible. The main message of the Bible is to tell us about the activity of God. What did the men filled with the Holy Spirit talk about on the day of Pentecost? Well, fortunately we have the evidence of the people who were there. These men ‘were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?’ Then the list of the people follows – ‘. . . Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues’ – speak what? the wonderful experiences we have had? No, – 0′the wonderful works of God.’ That is the theme of the whole Bible. The Bible is the record of the wonderful works of God. It is not a textbook of theology primarily; it is a history book, the history of the wonderful works of God. The Bible is really the history of the salvation of God. In order to be that, it has to start with the beginning: the creation and so on. But its real message is God’s activity in the redemption of a fallen human race. Is not that its message from beginning to end? ‘In the beginning God created.’ How can we possibly go wrong after that? But we do – we forget that it all begins with God.

Then the story goes on. Every time man acts, he always does something wrong, doesn’t he? He sins, he rebels, he goes astray in his cleverness, and so on. And the whole thing had ended, were it not that God comes in. Isn’t it amazing how we can miss this? Adam and Eve listen to the devil, you see, and they sin, and they immediately realize they have done wrong, and they are alarmed and they are troubled, and they go and hide. God comes down – God coming down! – in the cool of the evening, and He shouts, ‘Adam, where art thou?’ And out they come, trembling. God – God coming down! This is a summary of the whole message. I wish I had the time just to take you through the whole thing again. You say that we know all this. I know. The people to whom the psalmist recapitulated the history, they knew. And you remember what old Peter says in his second Epistle. He is going to die, he says. What is he going to do with them? Is he giving them a new message? No. He is reminding them of the things they already know. Why? Well, because although they knew them, they had forgotten them. The greatest need in the Church and the greatest need of ourselves is to be reminded of what we know. ‘Though you know them’, says Peter, ‘and are established in the present truth’ – and he keeps on repeating this. Yea, he says, while I am in this tabernacle I am to go on reminding you. Is it not tragic that we need to be reminded of the central thing? We are experts on details, but we have forgotten the centre. So we need to be reminded of all this.

The Bible is full of it. God did not stop acting when He came down to the garden of Eden. He went on acting. The tower of Babel, the flood before the tower of Babel, the call of Abraham – this is God acting, God interfering, God erupting into it all, choosing men, speaking, giving them a message – and on you could go. Go through it all. Those patriarchs: Jacob – that night and the ladder, the living God, the house of God, and the great vision. Are you asking me to believe that Jacob was in a superior position to us? Are you in the position in which you say, ‘I wish I was living in the times of Jacob, and that I could have a direct contact with God’? That is what is being taught, you know. What is being taught in Christendom today is this, that since we have got the New Testament canon, since we have got the Word now, we do not need these direct interventions, we do not need God to speak to us directly, as He spoke to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob and these patriarchs. We have got the Word now! Is this superior to the direct speech of God? I think we are mad! There is no other word for this. We are mad’ We are meant to be in a superior position to every Old Testament saint because of what has happened in our blessed Lord and Saviour! But this teaching would have us believe that we do not need this direct contact with God now, and that all that has come to an end since the formation of the New Testament canon.

Well, go on, read about Moses, read about Joshua and about David. Go and read about the messages as they came to the great prophets. And all is God raising up, God acting, God interfering. Then, ‘when the fulness of the time was come, God send forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.’ And the whole time we have the law, the finger of God. ‘The words I speak, I speak not of myself’. We see His utter dependence upon His Father. He is repeating the message that has been given to Him. He puts His whole emphasis upon the activity of God. This is a part of His self-humiliation. He does not empty Himself of His Godhead, but He empties Himself of some of the prerogatives, and He is living as a man, and He is dependent. That is why He used to pray so much. ‘Our Lord had a greater need of prayer than you and I. We can get on much better without prayer than our Lord could!’ That is our position! Why? ‘We have got the New Testament canon – work out the theology! We do not need this now! We have got the truth; it is understanding of the truth that matters’, we say! So we do not pray. So we do not know God!

Well, here it is. This is what I want to emphasize. Our Lord has given this teaching, and He returned to heaven. Has God stopped acting? Read the book of Acts. And it is a book of acts, as has been pointed out; not so much the acts of the Apostles, as the acts of the Holy Spirit, the acts of the risen Lord through these Apostles. That is what they keep on saying. When the people came to Peter and John in the temple and were ready to worship them, they said, ‘It is not we. It is His Name, – through the power that is in His Name – that has done this wonderful thing.’ All along they pointed people to Him. It is the activity of the risen Lord. Luke at the very introduction speaks of the things which ‘Jesus began to do’. He is still doing them! The same Jesus! He has gone back, but He has not stopped acting. They are the acts of the living Lord and on they go. You find it running right through this book of the Acts of the Apostles. Then you get your Epistles with their great expositions. But does this mean that because we have got it all recorded, He has stopped acting? I suggest that that is to deny the message of the Scriptures. He goes on acting. He has not stopped acting. As He did not stop when He rose from the dead, and He did not stop when the Spirit was sent, still less has He stopped because we have got the New Testament canon.

GOD’S METHOD

He has gone on acting subsequently throughout the running centuries. We would not be here this afternoon, if it were not for the living and the acting God. The study of the Scriptures alone would have finished the Church long ago. Your great experts your orthodox men – it was dead – and it would have died! And what has kept the Church alive has been God acting in revival. John the Baptist was not the last man that God called – of course not! The Apostles were not the last men that Christ called. He has been calling men ever since. Brethren, He has called us. It is because of the acting God that we are where we are and what we are. But you see it, of course, supremely in this matter of revival. Jonathan Edwards is surely right when he says, that God’s main method throughout the centuries of adding to the Church and adding to the number of the elect has been through revival. I think that this is true. I think the history of the Church proves this. That has been God’s main method: the hundreds, the thousands are brought in in revival. There are conversions in the intervening periods, but the great additions – the majority of the people when the final number of the elect is made up and they are counted – you will find that the vast majority have come in during periods of revival. And revival is nothing but the direct activity of God the Holy Spirit, the mighty rushing wind, the Spirit coming down, the Spirit being poured out. It is Christ who does this. He is the One who baptizes with the Spirit. He pours out His Spirit. And this, I say, is what is meant by revival.

Now it sounds as if I am discouraging the study of the Scriptures and theology, which I am not. All I am saying is that if we stop at that, we are excluding God. Do that for all you are worth, but on top of it all, remember that the great point of the whole teaching of the Bible, of all you can deduce from it, is to tell you that God is a God who acts. And our only hope this afternoon is that this is still true. He has not finished acting. He is going on. The number of the elect is going to be made up; all Israel is going to be gathered in. What comfort have you got as you face your modern humanism and materialism, and the various philosophies, and communism, and everything that is so much against us? Is your study in the Scriptures, is your apologetics going to deal with this? If you believe that, you are the biggest fool in Christendom! There is only one hope. That is that He is still the living and the acting God. Christ is at His right hand, and He is seated and waiting until His enemies should be made His footstool. God knows when the end is coming. He alone knows it, but it is coming. It is coming! There is a day coming when Christ will come back conquering and to conquer. Let the world do what it will. Let hell be let loose. It will make no difference; there is nothing that ‘can make Him His purpose forgo’ – thank God! -’nor sever my soul from His love.’

OUR SUPREME NEED

Very well, what I deduce from all this is this, that our supreme need is the realization of the fact that God is alive, and that God acts and is still acting. History, of course, is so full of this. We are not the first to be fools and to go astray. Remember what they did at the end of the seventeenth, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Things were very bad then much as they are now. Robert Boyle felt that something must be done about it. What did he do? Oh appoint a lectureship; we are going to do it, you see! Lectureship! We are going to defend the truth. Bishop Butler – Butler’s Analogy! What is he doing? Oh, defending the truth against the rationalists, Cambridge Platonists, the rationalists and the deists. Defending the truth! Wonderful – great men – great scholars! They are going to defend the truth of God! But do you remember the story of what happened? It was George 1, I think, who asked somebody one day about Bishop Butler: ‘Is Bishop Butler dead?’ ‘No, Sir’, said this man, ‘he is not dead, but he is buried somewhere in the country.’ What a good commentary that is on so much of our scholarship! Very learned, very wonderful, but buried in the country! It did not make the slightest difference. But something did make a difference. What was it? God laid His hand on George Whitefield and something happened. Is it not obvious? Now, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that we do not need apologetics; but it has a very small place – keep it there. This is the thing. What the Boyle lectures and Butler’s Analogy did not do and cannot do, nor any other such similar endeavour, God comes in and does. He acts – the living God. He is still the same. And He has done it even since that eighteenth century.

‘PROVE ME NOW’

And now it seems to me that it comes to this. I feel that the message that God is giving to us in this conference is in the words of Malachi. I believe He is saying this to us: ‘Prove me now’ – ‘Prove Me. I am there; you prove Me.’ This has become a tremendous conviction with me. Maybe because I am facing my last years and I have been defending the faith – and people have praised me for doing it. Rubbish! What a miserable failure it has all been! From now on I am determined to do one thing only, and that is to give God no rest nor peace, until He does prove Himself and show Himself. I have expended so much energy in reasoning with the people about this faith. We have got to do that, it is part of preaching. But if we stop at that it will avail us nothing. But what I now am concerned about and I am concentrating on is this – asking God to show Himself, to do something, to give this touch, this manifestation of power. Nothing else will even make people listen to us. See, you bring out your apologetics; the others will answer. Every time you say something, you may say ‘This is unanswerable; nobody can turn this back.’ The reviewers wholly dismiss you, say you are a fool, you are ignorant, you do not know what you are talking about. That is what they will say. I can tell you now. You write your books. That is what you will get. I have had it! You see, one scholar . . . and another answers him. And they are satisfied. No, no! Nothing is going to call the attention of the masses of the people to the truth of this faith save a great phenomenon, such as the phenomenon of the day of Pentecost, the phenomenon of any one of the great revivals, the phenomenon of a single changed life. This is something that always arrests attention, maybe curiosity – what does it matter? The people come and listen. And the preacher has his opportunity. Nothing will avail us save this manifestation of the activity of God.

My plea, therefore, is simply this – and with this I close – that we keep this ever in the forefront of all our thinking, all our preparation of sermons, and all our praying in particular. We must not be content until we have had some manifestation of the activity of God. We must concentrate on this. This is my plea, that we concentrate on this, because it is the great message of the Bible, so substantiated by the lessons of history. That is obviously today the only thing that gives us any hope as we face the future. And God seems to be saying that to us. ‘Prove Me now. Try Me. Risk your everything on Me. Be fools for My sake. Cast yourselves utterly upon this belief.’ Let us put it like this: Do we really believe that God can still act? That is the question; that is the ultimate challenge. Or have we, for theological or some other reasons, excluded the very possibility? Here is the crucial matter. Do we individually and personally really believe that God still acts, can act and will act – in individuals, in groups of individuals, in churches, localities, perhaps even in countries? Do we believe that He is as capable of doing that today as He was in ancient times – the Old Testament, the New Testament times, the book of Acts, Protestant Reformation, Puritans, Methodist Awakening, 1859, 1904-5? Do we really believe that He can still do it? You see, it is ultimately what you believe about God. If He is the great Jehovah – I am that I am, I am that I shall be, unchanged, unchanging, unchangeable, the everlasting and eternal God – well, He can still do it. And I believe He is saying to us. ‘Try Me. Prove Me. Cast your all upon Me. Go on until I have given you the proof you desire.’ Then we will forget the trees for a while, and we will see the grand power of our God, and God’s gracious and eternal purposes in His dear Son. We will first be humbled, and I think many of us will feel that we have never been Christians at all. It will not be true; we are. But what we will experience then will be so great and glorious, so overwhelming, that we will scarcely believe that we have ever known anything about these things at all. May that day soon come!

* The Evangelical Magazine of Wales

I will simply let “The Doctor” speak for himself today. This has to be one of the most challenging quotes from him I have ever read:

“. . . The secret of the early Christians, the early Protestants, Puritans and Methodists was that they were taught about the love of Christ, and they became filled with a knowledge of it. Once a man has the love of Christ in his heart you need not train him to witness; he will do it. He will know the power, the constraint, the motive; everything is already there. It is a plain lie to suggest that people who regard this knowledge of the love of Christ as the supreme thing are useless, unhealthy mystics. The servants of God who have most adorned the life and the history of the Christian Church have always been men who have realized that this is the most important thing of all, and they have spent hours in prayer seeking His face and enjoying His love. The man who knows the love of Christ in his heart can do more in one hour than the busy type of man can do in a century. God forbid that we should ever make of activity an end in itself. Let us realize that the motive must come first, and that the motive must ever be the love of Christ.

I end with the question which I asked at the beginning: To which of the circles do you belong? Are you pressing your way right into the centre? . . .

Are we pressing into the innermost circle? Are we seeking the Lord’s face? Are we coveting the knowledge of His love? The Apostle prayed for every single member of the Church at Ephesus that he or she ‘might be able to comprehend with all saints what is the length and breadth and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.’ How tragic it is that any of us should be living as paupers, out on the cold street, while the banqueting chamber is open and the feast prepared. Let us search for the knowledge of the Lord in the Scriptures and read about it in the lives of the saints throughout the centuries. As we do so, we shall never be content until we are in the innermost circle and looking into His blessed face.”

Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. An Exposition of Ephesians 3: The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979, pp.247-253.

Its time I reinstated Piper Friday here, It had never been canceled, merely put on hold! Writing a book has taught me that many tasks take a lot longer than our instant coffee generation wants us to believe. My deadline rapidly approaches now, but I hope that in many ways my book is the product not just of the 2 years or so that I have been studying specifically the resurrection, but also my entire Christian life to this point.

Often, however, I do still feel like I am merely a beginner in this walk of ours. I still have much to learn. Piper is one great source of such learning, and his series on Romans 6 is a great place that has helped me much in my thinking about how the resurrection of Jesus affects us. If I went there looking for a “quick fix” solution to all my problems and the troubles of the church, today’s Piper quote disabuses me of that notion!

Here’s the difference between the pragmatists and the Puritans: pragmatists do not have the patience to sink the roots of hospitality and brotherly kindness and authentic love in the deep rock of Romans 6-8. We want to jump straight from justification to the practical application of chapter 12. Just give us a list. Tell us what to do. Fix the problem at the immediate surface level, so it goes away. But the Puritans were different. They looked at the book of Romans and saw that life is built another way. Being a sage, being a Redwood, being unshakable in storm and useful in times of indescribable suffering – that does not come quickly or easily. Romans is not two chapters long. It is 16 chapters long. It does not skip from chapter 5 to 12. It leads us down deep into the roots of godliness, so that when we come up, we are not people with lists, but people with unshakable life and strength and holiness and wisdom and love. John Piper on Romans 6 September 24, 2000 READ MORE.

Video of this talk is now available to watch here:

Tim Keller – Preaching the Gospel from Newfrontiers on Vimeo.

Earlier in the week, Tim Keller spoke at a Newfrontiers event. He gave three posts, and I was there taking notes. There were over 800 people there to hear him. As usual these notes are colored a bit by my own perceptions, and so do not necessarily reflect exactly what he said.

 This talk was very inspiring. Regular readers of my blog will know I often blog about preaching so it is no surprise that I found the talk fascinating.

Perhaps because he was standing just beneath where the Doctor actually preached, he appropriately started by talking about Lloyd-Jones. He told us thaat The Doctor had said it was the fact that no one personality type became a christian that led him to believe. Tim made the point that he himself is really different than Mark Driscoll and they are both different from Terry. There is not one kind of person that evangelical Christianity always appeals to. Keller confessed to being a a cynical person, and said that there are not too many charismatic cynics!

He explained that he was not wanting to build a new foundation for us in our consideration of preaching, just to tweak us with four principles:

1. Preaching must be gospel centered

Tim explained that he had reservations about the popular way we tell the gospel as “two ways to live”. He argued that in Western culture we must make sure people know there are in fact three ways to live.

“God’s way” vs “Mans Way” is commonly what we say. But it is more clarifying to show people that we can live in either morality, immorality or the gospel. Or put another way, we can live in religion, irreligion or by grace. He drew this out of the story of the Prodigal son. One son was clearly alienated. The other is compliant and obedient trying to please his father but they were both alienated from the father. Both are lost. You can be lost by obeying God as well as by disobeying God.

We try to be our own savior and lord by running off and doing our own thing or by coming to church and praying, and studying the Bible. If you do that believing that God is now going to have to save you and answer your prayers because of how good you are then Jesus is an example, helper, model but he is not your savior. If you are trying to be your own savior and lord you will say “How dare you let bad things happen to me”. If you simply say “come to Jesus and follow him” you are inviting people to become the elder brother.

Tim explained that Romans 1 is about pagans and sex, drugs and rock and roll. But Romans 2 is turned on the people passing judgment on them all. Chapter 1 is the younger brother, 2-3 are the older brother. In the sermon on the mount Jesus says “there are two ways to live” – house on rock or on sand. In the sermon it’s people who pray and people who think they will be heard for their many words who are on the sand. It’s people who give for reward vs. those who do it for no reward. In the sermon the two ways are the “good life” and the way of the gospel. i.e. the sermon is against legalism and religion. I obey therefore I am accepted vs. I am accepted because of the work of Jesus on the cross wholly and completely by grace and so I obey out of that.

Religion brings fear – I have to do this or God will get me. Gospel brings gratitude. There is poise to a gospel person who suffers. If you are religious and suffer then you will be angry at God since you think you have “earnt” his blessing. The gopsel tells us “I am more wicked than I ever dared imagine but I am also more loved than I ever could have imagined.” This brings a bold humility. A religious person is always either smug or despondent.

Some people fear that preaching against legalism won’t help the younger brother. Unless the secular person hears you deconstructing legalism they won’t understand the difference. There is a gracious way to live that doesn’t turn you into a Pharisee. This has to be in everything you preach.

2. Preaching must be Christ centered

In order to be gospel centered no matter what the text is about you have to bring people to Jesus. If we are just preaching about how to live your life we are preaching synagogue sermons. We must show people the way to Jesus’ salvation. Our default mode is to go back to self-justification.

Tim then joked, “I’m a Presbyterian so I don’t hear God as often as you do”! But went on to tell us how years ago he was reading Romans 1:16 and suddenly a thought came: “He who through preaching is righteous will die a thousand deaths every Saturday night” Tim said “even Presbyterians know where that came from!”

He then explained that we have to bang the gospel into peoples heads continually as Luther said. We must get to Jesus. There is a tendency to think that you give them great information and then they are going to go out into the world and use what you taught them to change their life. BUT instead, he believes sermons should be:

3. Life changing on the spot

Its there in their seats that they will be changed. When Jesus came back from the dead and did a biblical seminar, we are told in Luke 24 that he showed them they didn’t know how to read the scripture because the bible is all about him. The theme of covenant, Kingdom, exile, all those themes find their climax in Jesus. E.g. Jesus was exiled for us. When Paul says give, he says “because of what Jesus did for us”. His generosity is where our wealth and security is.

I have to see Jesus to change me. When you see Jesus in a new way or sense his salvation this will change you on the spot.

4. Culturally transforming

Christians don’t do a good job of this. People who are not believers who hear you need to be persuaded. We say to unbelievers “you’re wrong”. We believe this and that, you in the world don’t, we are right and you are nowhere near right now, let us pray! We are negative and combative and blunt. There is another way to go.

Every culture has some things they hate. In the Middle east they love what the gospel says about sex and hate what it says about forgiveness. Here in London, they hate what we say about sex and love what we says about forgiveness and reconciliation. Some doctrines are found appealing (called “a”), others are seen as offensive (called “b”). If you want to preach “b” doctrines that are disarming, you have to float them on a boat of “a” doctrines. We must preach to win people. A lot of people hate the idea of God as judge and punisher.

Keller cited a Croat theologian who would say something like “Many think of you believe that belief in a God of vengeance and wrath leads to violence. This shows you have never suffered yourself. If you had seen your village ravaged and friends and relatives raped, and males murdered, then if you don’t believe in a God who is going to put all things right the only alternative is to pick up the sword yourself and smite the people that did that. The only way to live in peace with enemies is to know that God will be just. If you don’t understand that you have lived a very sheltered life.”

Here peacemaking is the “a” doctrine that he floated the “b” doctrine of judgement and justice on.

Tim gave another example of a missionary in Korea who found that when she spoke of sovereignty and predestination in that culture that it was easily acceptable and enabled her to build a bridge to grace which on its own was incomprehensible. Tell them that aspects of what they believe is good and right, but then win them and lead them to Christ.

In personal relationships he said we should have a strong bias towards listening. Say “I really need to know what your biggest problems with Christianity are.” You have to be in heavy listening mode till they say “you are articulating my objections better than I can!” When you have connected with their disagreement then you can begin to answer it. They need to be saying “You really do understand where I am coming from…”

He gave an example of how to float predestination to a Christian. “Why are you a Christian and your friend isn’t” “because I repented” “why?” then eventually, “Are you saying there is something better about you?” If not, then you believe in predestination…. GRACE requires predestination. In the west, grace is the front door. Don’t bring them in the back door!

Keller then alluded to a section on preaching from Jonathan Edwards “Thoughts on Revival”. He said that preaching is about bringing Christ to bear on the heart. In the sermon there is an act of worship. God takes the word of the preacher and gives a person a vision of Jesus that shapes the heart on the spot. We are looking for a divine supernatural light. You can know honey is sweet without tasting it. But we need the sense of the sweetness – give them a taste of Jesus and you will see them change on the spot. I have not been able to identify that quote, despite the wonderful http://edwards.yale.edu If YOU can help us, send me an email.

UPDATE- Dave Bish responded in less than an hour, and said that the honey quote can be found online. In fact Edwards said something similar about honey many times, so it would seem there was another place where it is more related to preaching during revivals.

UPDATE – Joe Rigney has posted some more information about this piece on Edwards.

Keller also mentioned that the Doctor made a comment on that Edwards sermon and as a result he was ambivalent about people taking notes. He asks if it is just information or an act of worship? We should be seeing Jesus. I couldn’t find the Doctor’s quote either but this one has a similar sentiment:

The life of Christ is in us! It is not theory, it is a life-giving teaching, it is a life-imparting teaching. If I am preaching in the Spirit, as I pray God I am, I am not only uttering words to you, I am imparting life to you, I am being used of God as the channel of the Spirit and my words bring life and not merely knowledge. Do you accept that distinction? I am almost afraid sometimes for those of you who take notes, that you may just be getting the words and not the Spirit. I am not saying that you should not take notes, but I do warn you to be careful. Much more important than the words is the Spirit, the life; in Christ we are being taught, and built up in Him. So that in a sense, though you may forget the words, you will have received the life, and you go out aware of the life of God, as it were, pulsating within you. David Martyn. Lloyd-Jones, Christian Unity (Studies in Ephesians, Chapter 4, Verses 1 Through 16) (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972), 114.

UPDATE I then got another email from the Bish telling me that I had already linked twice to the Edwards quote in question (!) I should clearly have searched my own site…Anyway, here it is with a URL you can visit:

“The first and primary object of preaching is not only to give information. It is, as Edwards says, to produce an impression. It is the impression at the time that matters, even more than what you can remember subsequently. In this respect Edwards is, in a sense, critical of what was a prominent Puritan custom and practice. The Puritan father would catechize and question the children as to what the preacher had said. Edwards, in my opinion, has the true notion of preaching. It is not primarily to impart information; and while you are writing your notes you may be missing something of the impact of the Spirit. As preachers we must not forget this. We are not merely imparters of information” Jonathan Edwards and the Crucial Importance of Revival by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

Keller recommended a couple of books – Christ Centered Peaching by Brian Chapel, and Graham Goldsworthy Preaching the Whole Bible.

He also suggested his own Christianity Today article on the gospel in all its forms

UPDATE
Although he doesn’t know me, the songwriter has been kind enough to allow me to host the file here to download or listen online:

This song was apparently written less than a month ago by a relatively unknown worship leader. But thanks to the Internet and my friend, Dave Bish, I have found myself listening to a rough acoustic recording of it many many times today with tears streaming down my face.

I predict that this will be a massive, massive song. It expresses the gospel better than anything new I have heard in a long time. I dare you to go and listen to this right now. I can’t wait until they release a band version, which is apparently coming soon. The music PDF is also available. It was apparently inspired by a Puritan prayer. Here are the words to The Grace of My God.

1. The grace of my God, an unbreakable chain,
   for those He redeems, He in grace will sustain.
   I will treasure the cross and rejoice in the Prize,
   This unspeakable Gift! This the gospel of Christ!

2. Without Him my eyes would be downcast in guilt,
   And in trembling shame would my lips have been sealed.
   Yet my mouth fills with praise, when I call on His name
   And my eyes may delight in the wonders of Christ!

   Chorus
   Yes, wave upon wave of grace reaches me,
   He deals with my sin and He washes me clean.
   And each accusation is drowned by His blood,
   For Jesus has paid with immeasurable love!

3. Without Him is hell, where His wrath will consume,
   In perpetual fire; an eternity doomed.
   Yet in Him is all love, and my soul is at rest,
   For hell’s gates have been barred through His glorious death!
4. Without Him the darkness is all I can see,
   And the terror of sin would abound within me.
   Yet a boundless horizon of glory is mine,
   When Christ in the depths of my heart is all light!
5. By grace my affection is drawn to the Lord,
   And by grace I’m renewed by the power of His word.
   It is grace that will strengthen my will and resolve
   To live for my Christ ’til I kneel at His throne!

   Matt Giles © 2008. Honeycomb Music Publishing Ltd.
   v1, v2, ch, v3, ch, v4, ch, ch (instrumental), v5, ch.

Fred Sanders has a great post interacting with Thomas Goodwin’s exalted view of Ephesians. Goodwin is not alone. In the “Introduction” to his series on Ephesians, Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote this:

“It is very difficult to speak of [Ephesians] in a controlled manner because of its greatness and because of its sublimity. Many have tried to describe it. One writer has described it as ‘the crown and climax of Pauline theology’. Another has said that it is ‘the distilled essence of the Christian religion, the most authoritative and most consummate compendium of our holy Christian faith’. What language! And it is by no means exaggerated.

. . . . the peculiar feature and characteristic of the Epistle to the Ephesians is that here the Apostle seems to be, as he puts it himself, in ‘the heavenly places’, and he is looking down at the great panorama of salvation and redemption . . . The result is that in this Epistle there is very little controversy; and that is so because his great concern here was to give to the Ephesians . . . a panoramic view of this wondrous and glorious work of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

. . . Luther says of the Epistle to the Romans that it is ‘the most important document in the New Testament, the gospel in its purest expression’, and in many ways I agree that there is no purer, plainer statement of the gospel than in the Epistle to the Romans. Accepting that as true, I would venture to add if the Epistle to the Romans is the purest expression of the gospel, the Epistle to the Ephesians is the sublimest and the most majestic expression of it. . . .There are statements and passages in this Epistle which really baffle description. The great Apostle piles epithet upon epithet, adjective upon adjective, and still he cannot express himself adequately. There are passages in [the] first chapter, and others in the third chapter, especially towards its end, where the Apostle is carried out above and beyond himself and loses and abandons himself in a great outburst of worship and praise and thanksgiving. I repeat, therefore, that there is nothing more sublime in the whole range of Scripture than this Epistle to the Ephesians.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. God’s Ultimate Purpose—An Exposition of Ephesians 1, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1978, pp. 11-12.

It seems then that Lloyd-Jones ranked Ephesians very highly indeed. I suspect it is only his challenging views on ‘sealing with the Spirit’ that have stopped the Doctor’s far shorter work on Ephesians from being as well known as his major work on Romans. I strongly urge every would-be preacher to do what I did decades ago and get yourself a copy and read through Ephesians with Martyn Lloyd-Jones as your guide.

Anyway, here is Fred:

[Goodwin] quotes Jerome’s comment that Ephesians is “like the heart in the midst of the body,” (quomodo cor animalis in medio est), and says that just as the heart is “the prime seat and fountain of spirits, and the fullest thereof,” Ephesians has everything important in it that you can find anywhere in Scripture. In fact, it has “more of the spirits, the quintessence of the mysteries of Christ,” than can be found anywhere else in the Bible.

And in case you don’t believe Goodwin or Jerome, Goodwin hazards the observation that Paul himself seemed to be aware that he’d written something especially specially special: In Ephesians 3:3, Paul says that a rich treasury of insight into the mystery of the gospel had been given to him, “as I said before.” Goodwin thinks “as I said before” means “up there, the last couple of chapters.”

If you are interested in finding out more about Ephesians, feel free to follow along with our church as we preach our way through this amazing book. Either subscribe to our podcast or visit Jubilee Church, London.

In conclusive proof that there is nothing new under the sun, we see in this quote on John Owen a devoted conviction to both Word and Spirit. How we need churches today who will bring both emphases to the fore, as did Martyn Lloyd Jones in the quote I posted yesterday.

May God raise up an army of believers who can say “Amen!” to the following quote where Owen is described by the editors of Communion With the Triune God as follows:

“Central to Puritan thinking was an effort to make sure their activities held together two realities—Word and Spirit. Thus, even when Puritans spoke of the vital importance of the Word—whether preached or read—they always linked this with the Spirit. For them, Spirit and Word should always be united; when they are separated, problems quickly arise. John Owen self-consciously viewed himself as a theologian of the Spirit, and as such he poured more time and energy into exploring questions related to the third person of the Trinity than anyone else in his day, and possibly even before him.”

Owen, John. Communion With the Triune God, Eds. Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor, Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 2007, p. 42.

In this quote, taken once again from the Doctor on Ephesians, we see a strong emphasis on experience. The Christian must KNOW God. Oh, how little we emphasize that today! How poor our experience often is. How few people glow when they speak about their relationship with their precious Saviour. How this challenges me personally once again to seek God!

“There are, unfortunately, even many evangelical Christians who deny that God has any direct dealings with men today, and who hold feeling and emotion at a discount. They frequently substitute for true emotion a flabby sentimentalism. They are afraid of the power of the Holy Spirit, and so afraid of certain excesses which are sometimes found in mysticism and in certain people who claim to have unusual experiences of the Holy Spirit, that they ‘quench the Spirit’ and never have any personal knowledge of Christ. Indeed, they often go so far as to deny the possibility of such a knowledge.

This is obviously something with which we must deal, for if we hold this particular view we shall clearly never seek the knowledge of which the Apostle is speaking, and therefore shall never have it. How then do we answer this charge?

There is, of course, a false mysticism. This becomes quite clear in books on the subject and especially in the biographies of certain mystics. Beyond a doubt, there were aberrations in the lives of many of them, and much that was morbid and unhealthy. There is a morbid, introspective, selfish, impractical and useless type of mysticism. But because certain mystics have been guilty of such things we should not allow ourselves to be blinded to that which is a true and healthy mysticism, a mysticism which is taught in the Bible itself . . .

. . . we must remind ourselves that this teaching is found, perhaps supremely, in the words of our blessed Lord Himself. In the fourteenth chapter of John’s Gospel, having told them that He is about to leave them, our Lord says: ‘Let not your hearts be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me’. They were troubled when told that He was going to leave them. They had been with Him three years, they had looked into His face, they had seen His miracles, heard His sermons, and could always ask Him questions. But now He is going to leave them, and they feared that they could not possibly continue to live and be happy without Him. His answer was, ‘I will come unto you. I will manifest myself to you’ (vv. 18, 21, 22). But still more explicitly in the sixteenth chapter we find Him saying, ‘It is expedient for you that I go away’ (v. 7). It would be good for them that He was going to leave them and to go away from them in the form in which He was then with them, because (as He proceeded to explain) ‘if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go away I will send him unto you’. How can it be expedient for the disciples that He should leave them in the flesh and go away from them in the body? How can that be true if it is not possible for the Christian to know Him immediately and directly? Obviously the supreme blessing is to be with Him, in His presence and in His company. What He is really saying is that after He has gone and has baptized them with the Holy Ghost, He will be more real to them than He was at that moment. And this is what actually happened. They knew Him much better after Pentecost than they knew Him before. He was more real to them, more living to them, more vital to them afterwards than He was in the days of His flesh. His promise was literally fulfilled and verified . . .

Nothing stands out more prominently in the life of George Whitefield than his consciousness of the love of Christ. He knew it to an exceptional degree and you will find that it was always after he had had some exceptional experience of Christ that he was given unusual enlargement and liberty in his preaching, and that men and women were broken down and melted before his holy eloquence and his portrayal of the love of God in Christ Jesus. Charles Wesley knew it equally well, and so writes:

Enlarge, inflame, and fill my heart
With boundless charity divine!
So shall I all my strength exert,
And love them with a zeal like Thine.
This has been true of God’s greatest servants in all ages, in all centuries, in all places.

. . . The secret of the early Christians, the early Protestants, Puritans and Methodists was that they were taught about the love of Christ, and they became filled with a knowledge of it. Once a man has the love of Christ in his heart you need not train him to witness; he will do it. He will know the power, the constraint, the motive; everything is already there. It is a plain lie to suggest that people who regard this knowledge of the love of Christ as the supreme thing are useless, unhealthy mystics. The servants of God who have most adorned the life and the history of the Christian Church have always been men who have realized that this is the most important thing of all, and they have spent hours in prayer seeking His face and enjoying His love. The man who knows the love of Christ in his heart can do more in one hour than the busy type of man can do in a century. God forbid that we should ever make of activity an end in itself. Let us realize that the motive must come first, and that the motive must ever be the love of Christ.

I end with the question which I asked at the beginning: To which of the circles do you belong? Are you pressing your way right into the centre? You may have seen people in a crowd, when the Queen or some other notable person is passing, trying to push themselves forward in order to have a front-line view. The same thing occurs at various games. There are those who always want to be in the front to have the best view. Are we pressing into the innermost circle? Are we seeking the Lord’s face? Are we coveting the knowledge of His love? The Apostle prayed for every single member of the Church at Ephesus that he or she ‘might be able to comprehend with all saints what is the length and breadth and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.’ How tragic it is that any of us should be living as paupers, out on the cold street, while the banqueting chamber is open and the feast prepared. Let us search for the knowledge of the Lord in the Scriptures and read about it in the lives of the saints throughout the centuries. As we do so, we shall never be content until we are in the innermost circle and looking into His blessed face.”

Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. An Exposition of Ephesians 3: The Unsearchable Riches of Christ, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979, pp.247-253.

For more information see my previous posts on Lloyd-Jones and the MLJ Recordings Trust website.

To be quite honest, when reading the publicity, this talk was the one that most inspired me to attend the Theology for All conference. Mark is somewhat of an expert on Church history, and in particular the Puritans. As a pastor, he is concerned not merely with transferring knowledge to his congregation, but also in showing them the lessons to be learned from what has happened in the past.

Mark underlined the old maxim, “What one generation knows and teaches, the second generation assumes, and the third generation loses.” Our study of Church history is to insure that we don’t fall into the same trap.

He explained that some people have mocked his interest in the Puritans. He has heard all the old jibes: “The Puritans hated bear bating, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it caused pleasure to the viewers.” Or, “The Puritans went to America because they were hoping to find more restrictions than were permissible under English law.” They are often characterized as those who were afraid that somebody somewhere might be having a good time! Dever does not believe those descriptions to be accurate.

Dever spent time focusing on Richard Sibbes. He began by explaining that Sibbes argued that the killing sin that many religious people lay under is a dead formality. Sibbes was eager to underline that the Spirit is the one who quickens, not mere words and structure. Spirit-less Christianity is no Christianity at all. He was no mere formalist himself.

Sibbes was a great success. He was able to preach the Gospel faithfully throughout his life. Sadly, many he influenced to become preachers did not find the same ease in the established faith.

Sibbes had a great optimism in the progress of the Gospel. He was even optimistic when godly people endured trials. His view of the Church was typical of the “magisterial reformers” (e.g. Calvin, etc.). The common thread was that the preaching of the Word was the heart of the Church.

Sibbes and his Puritan brethren had an evangelical vision of the Church. They wanted to see freedom in order that the Gospel could be preached. He firmly believed in the centrality of the right sort of preaching for the health of the Church.

“Death came in by the ear . . . so life comes in by the ear.” What happened to Adam? He heard a voice he should not have heard. In the same way, the Gospel is heard.

Sibbes did not worship preaching, however. He argued that “unless the Spirit of Christ quicken them,” preaching and the Word were useless. It is the preaching of the Gospel rightly anointed that will reveal Jesus to us. The Spirit flows with the doctrine that we hear according to Sibbes. Sibbes expressed himself fully, with passionate emotion.

What lessons can we learn for today? Sibbes challenges us with the centrality of preaching. Preaching is more fundamental than Church authority structure. Sibbes had friends who were Congregationalists and Presbyterians. He wanted the Gospel to go forth in all churches. Denominations are secondary pragmatic creations. In fact, denominations are parachurch organizations. It is the local church that is entrusted with the preaching.

Preaching is generative—it creates new life. It is by the Holy Spirit taking the preaching of the Gospel and bringing life that people are saved. The solution to our problem is neither making our churches as ‘pure’ as possible (i.e. a rigorous application of church discipline). Nor is it making our churches as nonthreatening to visitors as possible. Rather we must allow God’s Word to take center place. Preaching is more important than whatever else happens in the church’s meetings. The Spirit restores the ability of the soul to appreciate God, and enables man to desire him.

Our social action is not as important as preaching the Gospel! Preaching is more central to the health of your church than anything else you can think of. The great trunk of the Puritan view of the Church is that the Gospel preached is the hope of the Church.

links for 2006-04-12

• Adrian and his Church
  (tags: blogsearch cool)
• Mark Driscoll Interview
  (tags: driscoll adrianw interview emerging church gospel evangelism mission)
• Adrian’s Posts by Subject or Book of the Bible
  (tags: blogsearch cool)
• Mark Dever’s “The Message of the Old Testament”
  Justin Taylor makes available the contents, foreward, introduction, and first chapter of Mark Dever’s latest book, along with various endorsements.
  (tags: book dever taylor)
• Re-Igniting the Steve Chalke Atonement Debate – Is He an Abuser of the Bible?
  A comment on an old post of mine has identified Chalke as an abuser of the Bible, in the way he has deliberately omitted a phrase from his quotation of Isaiah 53:5 – “the punishment that brought us peace was upon him.”
  (tags: atonement chalke)
• The Contemporary Myth Gets It Exactly Wrong-An Essay on the DaVinci Code and Its Popularity
  Dr. N. T. Wright (Bishop of Durham, Church of England) waxes eloquent: “You may salve your conscience by embracing Gnosticism . . . but if Caesar takes any notice at all, all he will do is sneer at you and go on his way to yet more triumphs . . .”
  (tags: gospel mohler review)
• Changing Opinions in Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”
  Catez Stevens agrees we are seeking to know the mind of God, “but I do not think human reason can attain this. That would be trying to enclose the infinite within the finite.” “We can begin by considering the spiritual reality behind the material world.”
  (tags: creationism design)
• Dr. Sam Storms, Jonathan Edwards, and the Lowly Act of Footwashing
  “If one worm be a little exalted above another, by having more dust, or a bigger dunghill, how much he does make of himself! What a distance he does keep from those who are below him.” But in Christ meets infinite highness and infinite condescension.
  (tags: christ grace preaching puritans)
• Things Are Bad All Over
  “According to the Christian Post (UK), less than a quarter of Christians in the UK possess enough knowledge of the Bible to be able to place key events in the order they appear.” HT Jim Bublitz
  (tags: bible news)
• Confusion About Conservatives
  Article written by Udo Middleman and gleaned off The Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation new website. “Conservative implies there are realities we cannot avoid. Some are even worth keeping.”
  (tags: conservative)
• Sam Storms Interview
  (tags: adrianw interview)